“No, Ben will get Sir Hugo to go. He may be there already so I shouldn’t bother,” Joe replied casually.
Joe felt his temper boil. In spite of himself, he knew now that he strongly suspected who the Star Elite’s traitor was. Although the men had seriously considered him to be a possibility, Joe hadn’t truly believed it until now. After the events in the graveyard, though, he now believed the presumed culprit was the traitor and struggled to contain his emotions.
Marguerite felt the tension in the room and struggled to eat. She hadn’t realised how hungry she was until she had smelled the food. Now that she had eaten some of it, she wished she hadn’t because it sat like a lead weight in her stomach and made her feel slightly sick. There were distinct undercurrents flowing between the men. It was as though some of them were having a silent conversation she wasn’t privy to and she couldn’t quite make out if that was a good thing or not. A part of her didn’t want to know what they were up to. She had faced enough horrors for one night.
When he had finished his meal, Joe sipped his ale and watched Marguerite struggle with hers. She had hardly touched a thing, and that concerned him, not least because their battle wasn’t over yet. There was a long, hard road ahead that would be fraught with difficulties. If she didn’t get rest when she could, and ate whatever was available then she would get sick, and not have the strength to fight if she needed to.
“Tell me something, Marguerite, if I may call you that?” Brandon began.
“Yes, of course.”
“Has your father been behaving oddly of late?”
Marguerite shook her head. “Since the Count-Sayers-mentioned it, I have thought and thought about his behaviour over the last few weeks, but I cannot say that I have noticed anything unusual. He has been quiet, but he usually is. It is his trade, you see. It doesn’t require much interaction with people. In fact, he prefers it as quiet as possible because some of his work is quite fine.”
“He needs a steady hand,” Jacob added with a nod.
The workings of clocks were indeed fine and would require a keen eye for detail. Someone like Eustace would be absent minded when working, so he could understand, and had no reason to doubt her.
“What about his clock making?” Reg asked.
“What about it?”
“Are there any angry customers?” Joe leaned back in his chair to study her.
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “My father stopped making clocks for a while when my mother died. He seemed to lose interest in the business although kept it but allowed his associate to run it. Eventually, he gravitated back to it. I think he got rather bored and started to tinker to keep his mind occupied. Bit by bit, he was drawn back to it completely but, rather than make his usual clocks, he decided to make bespoke, more ornate timepieces. You know, fob watches and that kind of thing, together with specially commissioned clocks. He calls them his ‘pets’. They take him several months to make and are usually made to order. I don’t know much more about the business apart from that, and I cannot tell you anything about his customers. I don’t know who they are.”
She sighed when she realised just how little she knew about her father’s business. It made her wonder what else he was involved in that she wasn’t aware of.
“Has he been ill of late, or showing a tendency to be sharp with people?” Joe knew these were all the warning signs of someone with a secret to hide, or they were under pressure by unseen forces.
“I can’t really say that he h
as. Although-” she frowned while she contemplated what she was about to say. She considered it from all angles as she tried to understand if she was wrong, and there was another clear, logical explanation.
“Although?” Kerrigan prompted when she lapsed into thoughtful silence.
Her gaze met his. “He has been withdrawn of late, even more so than usual, and he has been forgetting things.”
“Like what?” Joe prompted.
“Well, just odd things, really. You know, like going outside without his cloak when it is clearly sunny and warm. He once went to have dinner with friends in his smoking jacket. He had completely forgotten to swap it for his dinner jacket. Often, he goes into rooms and forgets what he wants when he gets there. He just stands and stares into space.”
“Was that recently?” Kerrigan asked.
“Just last week,” she sighed, wondering if she was making something out of nothing.
“Go on,” Joe prodded when he had given her enough time to mull over what was bothering her.
“He has been a little different, but not so as you would notice. To most people, he would be the same.”
“You are not most people, though, Marguerite. You share the house with the man. If you have picked up there is a difference to his character then there is. What is it?” He tried not to sound sharp with her but there was a sharpness in his voice that made her look at him curiously.
At first, he thought she was going to dismiss it all and return to her meal. In the end, she sighed and leaned back in her seat.
“It is just little things, really. He has almost withdrawn into himself. He isn’t noisy but has been gone from the house sometimes without even saying goodbye. My father is a stickler for manners if nothing else. It is almost as though he hasn’t wanted me to know he has gone. When my mother was alive, she refused to allow his clocks anywhere near the house. She said it was like being under attack whenever they all went off. She allowed only the grandfather clock, the first my father ever made, into the house. It is still there. It is the only clock we have in the house now. He has gotten rid of all the rest.”
“What’s the problem with that?” he murmured, unsure where she was going with this.